"Song Writing Part 1" Video Transcription

Video Transcript: Song Writing Part One

Steve Elzinga  

All right, welcome back, hope you're enjoying this course on worship music, hopefully you're learning things and putting them into practice. This next section is sort of, you know, kind of at the advanced level, I suppose it's writing your own songs. Psalm 149, verse one, sing to the Lord, a new song in praise the assembly of the faithful people. So, back then they wrote new songs, we're not seeing the exact same songs King David did long ago. So songs have been written for centuries. And maybe you think, well, who are we to be writing songs? Well, why not? Someone has to. So why write your own songs. You have some mission musicians in your church that are at that Challenge Level, they, they're good players, they're good singers, they know the harmony, they've done all these things. And they're like, they need the next challenge. And, and we started in our church, and one guy came and said, he could write some songs. So he did, and we were a little nervous about it all. And if it's a lousy song, and how do we do that, but then others started doing the same.

Marie Elzinga  

Right? So it makes people feel good about their contribution to their church. And it's also just an expression of your faith, that's a way to, to put that out there. So I, you know, when people feel good about being able to use their gifts in this way, I think it helps people invite others to come to church.

Steve Elzinga  

Well, and it makes even the people of the church, you know, when people, you know, hey, our church, this is our song, and you know, we wrote it. And when people feel good about their church, they tend to invite people to their church. So works really good. And number three, that we will learn a lot about how music works, when you start writing songs and choruses and adding the harmonies and so on, you start, okay, this is this is really how music works.

Marie Elzinga  

And then it's just fun. It is, it's a good way to practice and get better at your craft, but it also develops you

Steve Elzinga  

ground rule for writing your own songs, just because you or someone in your church writes a song doesn't mean that it's good enough to spend the time and energy for the congregation to learn it. Ultimately, the worship leader, in conjunction with the pastor must decide,

Marie Elzinga  

yeah, I think when you're writing your own worship, songs, scripture, songs, whatever it might be, the ultimate goal should be your personal worship, if it gets used in the larger body. Great, but right, don't do it for that purpose. Or you might be disappointed, and you shouldn't put down the value of something your own offering to God. So that's fine.

Steve Elzinga  

So there's a lot of songs that I've written that the only person that has ever heard him is myself and my wife, and the dog when we had one. I mean, you know, so writing sizes for your own enjoyment. But then once in a while, there's a song that you think might work for the congregation. And again, it's easy to fall in love with the song that you wrote. And it might be good It might not be and so to let other people decide, and when you

Marie Elzinga  

create, create something like this, it almost becomes one of your children. Yeah. And it's hard to take criticism of one of your children. So

Steve Elzinga  

our correction, yeah, sir. So

Marie Elzinga  

that didn't work.

Steve Elzinga  

You have to have a lot of patience and humility, and all these things if you're gonna be starting to write the songs. So if you're going to do it, where would one begin? Many would begin us. Many would be songwriters start with the melody that they have going on in their head, then they go to some piano player or a guitar player, and ask them to do something with it. And it often doesn't go well, in some comes and they see and I have this tune and oh, Lord, you're great. I mean, it's just so you know, and they're hearing something really cool in their head. Okay, they got instruments going on, and drums coming in, and synthesizers and strings, but all I'm hearing is you singing and it might be a little off. And, and it doesn't hold together as a whole. It's like a piece here, it's a piece there. And then you want me to do something with it, that I don't know what to do with it. 

Steve Elzinga  

Other than, you know, start from scratch and redo it. So and usually it doesn't hold together as a unit because people are like, it's like, you know, I'm gonna go to my, my parents house and I get in the car and instead of going down the road, and following the road, I just start driving along the field and I just go in the general way that I think I want to go. It's not going to go that well. There's a road And the road goes this way, and then it turns this way. And if I stay on the road, eventually I get there. And so with songwriting, there's kind of a road that you have to follow. And, and the road in songwriting and in songs in general, the road is called a key. And, you know, we've said many times that the, you know, scale is made up of eight notes, and then it has some accidentals. But basically, it's eight notes. And that is something we recognize, and really, the eight notes are just get repeated. So if you play a scale, and then it repeats, again, going up. So you see all these keys, but really, it's just a set of eight and then a set of eight, a set of eight. And so that's a pattern. But then what we do with these keys to make more sense out of it, is we turn them into keys. And, and so you need to choose a key that your song is going to be in. So with the piano, you might start with the key of C, that's a nice key or the key of D, keep G, maybe E, and then a key, you know, has a root chord. And then then if you go a fourth up, so four notes up, A B C, Do Re Me Fa Sol array me fast. So you play the next chord there, and then you go one more which would be the fith. And then you go back to the one. So one, play one, four five one. 

Steve Elzinga  

With the guitar. Yeah, a key of C. there we go. Key of C, G, F. Then I wrote down A minor A minor is it's called the relative minor. It's like a, it's like a cousin 

Marie Elzinga  

Of the C Chord

Steve Elzinga  

A chord. Yeah, so this is a family, there's a family, it's called the C family. You gotta see you got a G you got to have. And then it's cousin, relative minor is A minor is more that kind of sad kind of sound. Or you could play in D, and it's the same thing D, A, G and then B minor. Or you could play in the key of G, those, these are just sort of the common chords. Or you could play an E, those are the ones that go with it. You play these four chords or three in you play them in different orders. So I might play C, G, A minor and F.. That'd be like a pattern, or I might start with A minor, then I might go to F, and I go to C, and then I go to G, you can sort of mix and match these, these orders. And you keep playing these orders. Until you get a pattern that you sort of like find the pattern or the order of the four chords that you have chosen ones that you like, usually a pattern begins and ends with the dominant chord. So if you're in the key of C, you want to begin and you sort of want to end your song there. So that sort of sort of finished it start with the key G begin with G and then you end with G if you can't just can't figure out a pattern for your chords borrow a pattern from a song you like the reality is that these patterns have been used by thousands and 10s of thousands of songs. There's only so many patterns and people just keep using the same patterns over and over and over again. So if you know a song already I learned a pattern. Long ago with Jim Crow, she sing a song. (singing a Chirstmas song) then another (Christmas song)

Steve Elzinga  

that I just borrowed all that to make my own song I just. (singing another hymn  About with me). That's just a hymn. I just took an old him and I put the Jim Croce chords that I really liked and it seemed to work so you can figure out a pattern. Just find a song and like figure out what the pattern in is and start playing along. Then you need a beat. Beat gives the feel and the style of the music, more than almost anything. Listening to different beats will automatically make you think of different chords and melody, sometimes I sit with this keyboard and it will start playing a certain beat. And it just makes me want to play a different kind of song. So if you have a drummer or some kind of drumming source, you just start playing it and all of a sudden, you're like, Oh, I and you start playing your chords to that beat, it sometimes helps. The instrument you use to play your chords and the sound you choose, like the keyboard if you can find like a violin sound or something. (so, Oh Lord I come to You, He is making it up as he goes)

Steve Elzinga  

So I have no idea what she's going to play or what the sound is going to be. But she starts playing and it just makes me go well, that, that sounds kind of bluesy. And then I just start singing bluesy kind of songs. And, you know, that's how you can start figuring out what kind of song you want you, you listen and have different kinds of sounds around you. And it just reminds you of different genres and you just automatically start doing something. 

Steve Elzinga  

Step three, the melody. Okay, how do you come up with a melody, find the melody that you like with the notes you've chosen in the chord pattern. So, for example, we have some examples here, look for the notes, whatever chord you're playing, decide if the melody you have sounds like a chorus, or for maybe a verse, if you have a verse than at a chorus. A Chorus is often higher than the verse. A Chorus can have more words or less words. 

Marie Elzinga  

A repetitive word

Steve Elzinga  

Chorus? Yep, chorus was the next one, the chorus may have the same chord progression, or it might be slightly different chord progression. Okay, let me let me sort of demonstrate that. So I remember when I was writing my first scripture song, I think the key of C, so playing C, G and A minor, then F. Then I went to C, G, F, That was sort of my pattern that I liked, so. I keep playing it over and over. Then I added a little beat to it that I liked. (Playing the guitar to get the beat)

Steve Elzinga  

By the way, that little the beat on giving is sort of the contemporary beat, unless at least in Western cultures, and it's like strong on the downbeat. But, but then, we're used to hearing a snare drum on the, you know, if it's 1 2 3 4, it's one with the bass drum. And on two it's the snare drum. So I'm trying to mimic the bass and then the snare. So that's the, that's the snare drum. I'm slapping this snare drum with my guitar. So I'm hitting the big, the lowest note on my guitar for the bass drum. So (playing the guitar while slapping it) Okay, so that's my verse. Now, I don't have a melody. So how do I find the melody? I gotta find the melody in the notes of the chord. So there are a lot of notes in this chord. I got to pick one of them. I can pick a low low and then I go to the next chord. So I'm kind of starting low and going up or I could start high. (singing high to low notes)

Steve Elzinga  

But but the notes that I'm choosing and I just random notes, there's somewhere in this chord, so they fit or I could sit on one note the whole time. It still works so he or he can go up and down. (playing and singing to show how it is done) You know, all the possibility that you can see, you can start loading stuff and go down and down, you go up, or you can vary it around, you can just try out, you know, a gazillion different options, I finally decided (Playing what he like and repeat). I have one phrase, and then I repeat the phrase, that's my verse. Now I want a chorus. Well, I'm going to keep the same chords make it real simple. But since I was started here, I'm going to go up with my chorus. So a lot of times courses go up, or they're just different from the verse. So here's my verse. (Singing and playing the guitar with his new chorus).

Steve Elzinga  

He elongated the words instead of so many words, I made up, you know, last longer so it's just slightly different from the verse. So that so basically, that's, you know, you just play around with the chords. If you play chords and get a pattern of chords long enough, some tune will start evolving out of that and you keep singing, keep singing it until you get it consistent. In the next session, we're going to talk about well Okay, then what do you do with it? How do you add words to something like that?